Sunday, March 12, 2017

Rachel Sanders is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Portland State University. Her research and teaching center on critical race and feminist studies, biopower, health and body politics, and popular culture.

From what I saw live and via social media, the tone of the January 21st worldwide women’s marches presented a striking counterpoint to the
previous day’s inaugural proceedings. The signs bearing slogans of defiant
protest, searing wit, and intersectional solidarity punctured the dark mood
Donald Trump’s first presidential speech, like his campaign, has engendered.
Trump’s tone was vividly morbid, eliciting optimism only after prolonged
decline and promising safety only in the midst of great danger. I took part in
the Seattle march. I meant for my sign to denounce and resist the uses of state
power Trump has championed, and the terms on which he has rationalized it. The
text of my two-sided sign read: Border
walls / immigration bans / racist policing / criminalizing people of color /
bathroom bills / racial and gendered narratives of protecting cis white women:
Not in my name.

I view Trump as articulating what Iris
Marion Young and Anna
Sampaio have called a racial and gendered logic of protection. In this
logic, the state positions itself in the masculine role of protector of a
citizenry it positions as subordinate, dependent, obedient, and grateful, in
order to legitimate a range of executive and legislative actions that it frames
as vital to “homeland security.” The head of state that invokes this logic
implicitly identifies with a particular brand of strong-but-chivalrous white
masculinity poised to defend a vulnerable populace against dark forces
threatening its safety or honor. (To be sure, Trump’s history of bullying women
like Megyn
Kelly and Heidi
Cruz and bragging
about committing sexual assault betrays qualities of predatory rather than
protective masculinity. His victory, however, suggests that his self-portrait
as an executive who will “take
care of women” overshadows his record of aggression against them.)

This logic is historically
specific to a post-9/11 America defined by a growing Latinx population,
systematic police brutality against black and brown Americans, and pervasive
unease about foreign and domestic terrorist threats. Yet the notions of race
and gender it relies on date back at least to the late nineteenth century, when
white
lynch mobs’ regular practice of brutalizing black men (and
women and children) found convincing justification in what Angela
Davis calls ‘the myth of the black male rapist.’ Though there are marked
differences, the core racial and gender subject positions of lynching
rationales pervade the contemporary racial and gendered logic of protection.
Both narratives figure white men as chivalrous protectors of white women’s
physical safety. Both demonize men of color as sexual predators, criminals and
terrorists. Both valorize white women as worthy of protection while implying
their subordinate status as sexual prey in need of male protection. And both
devalue women of color by discounting their endurance of systematic sexual
assault at the hands of white men since slavery, and by implying that they are
unworthy or less worthy of protection.

This logic was the cornerstone of
Trump’s candidacy. His campaign kickoff speech portrayed Mexican immigrants as
“rapists” and “bad people” who are “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” across
the U.S. border and vowed to build a two-thousand-mile-long wall barring their
entry into the country. Among many instances of exploiting tragedies for political
profit, Trump seized
on the fatal shooting of San Francisco visitor Kathryn Steinle by
Juan Francisco Sanchez,
an undocumented immigrant who had been deported from the U.S. five times and who
had aimlessly fired a stolen gun on Pier 14, as a case of a “beautiful woman”
being “viciously killed” and as “another example of why we must secure our
border.” Likewise, Trump referred to the gunman behind last June’s
Orlando nightclub shooting, who
was born in the U.S. to parents who had emigrated from Afghanistan over thirty
years ago, as “an Afghan” and cited the tragedy to justify his calls for sweeping immigration bans
against all Muslim immigrants. Trump’s
geared-to-white-ears stump speech portrayals of “inner cities” as fearsome
zones of crime and violence, his proclamations that he is “the law and
order candidate” who will make police forces and civilians safe again, and his praise
of stop-and-frisk practices (which disproportionately single out black
Americans) as a “proactive” and effective policing tactic all contribute to the
demonization of black men and women. (As dual threads of racial and gendered
narratives of protection, the Charleston church slaughterer Dylann Roof’s assertion
that “blacks are killing white people on the streets… and raping
white women every day” and Trump’s campaign trail lamentations
of endangered police officers and of “Kate, beautiful Kate” share similar
premises and invigorate similar stereotypes.

"'Cuckservative' is a neologistic term of abuse formed as a portmanteau of the word cuckold and the political designation conservative. It has become an increasingly popular pejorative label used among alt-right supporters in the United States." (source)

By continuously conflating mainstream Muslim Americans and Latinx
citizens with Islamic terrorists and Mexican migrants (he has accused American Muslims of failing to report “people who they know are bad” to security
authorities); by peddling a campaign slogan evoking nostalgia
for an earlier era of unchallenged white and male economic, social and
political supremacy; and by framing America’s greatest threats as Arab
terrorists, violent black urbanites, central and south American immigrants
competing unfairly for scarce jobs, and Asian nations who have roped the U.S.
into “losing” trade deals, Trump’s protectionist narratives racialize not only
their villains – people of color, citizens and foreigners alike – but also
their victims. They implicitly construct as white, that is, the portion of the
American citizenry deemed legitimate and deserving of protection. At the same
time, these narratives feminize all members of that worthy citizenry as docile,
physically and economically vulnerable, and thus subordinate.

Trump has not been an outspoken
proponent of municipal and state policies limiting transgender bathroom access,
but he has signaled he will let such laws stand as matters of local
sovereignty. In so doing, Trump sustains the logic of masculine protection
underpinning recent bathroom bills, which claim to protect
cisgender women vulnerable to spying and sexual assault by male and
transgender restroom-goers. The conservative lawmakers promoting these bills not
only depict trans and gender-nonconforming people as sexually deviant and
dangerous and reinforce notions that cisgender women need men’s physical and
legislative protection. They also conceal cisgender men’s and women’s practices
of harassing, intimidating, and assaulting
trans and gender-nonconforming people in bathroom settings. Trump’s inaction
on this issue sustains these dominant
safety narratives. And his incendiary rhetoric and campaign
rally antics have invited ordinary citizens to act as vigilante bullies and
law and norm enforcers.

In his first days in office, President Trump continues to
demonize black, brown and Muslim Americans and to exalt a select, authentically
American constituency in need of protection. By portraying this constituency as
the weak and grateful beneficiary of gallant masculine guardianship and
vilifying virtually all people of color in the process, Trump plays a powerful
role in reproducing the racial and gender stereotypes that perpetuate the
inequalities a truly “great” America must shatter. His rhetoric is more
threatening to social justice than the forces he so starkly depicts.

As a white woman, I am unwillingly but inescapably part of the
constituency President Trump claims to protect. My sign was one way of saying:
not in my name. Blanket immigration bans and border walls that unduly
criminalize Muslims and Mexicans in order to protect “native” Americans (oh,
Mr. President, tragic irony eludes you): not in my name. A “law and order administration” that disproportionately targets and
brutalizes black people in order to safeguard “good” communities: not in my
name. Upholding “states’ rights” to enact bathroom bills in order to shield
girls and women from hypothetical violation by predatory restroom users (while
open-carry gun laws
remain on the books): not in my name. I stand against, and I must find new ways
to resist, the policies and executive actions being staged, or at least
legitimated, on my behalf, and I urge other white Americans to do the same.